I firmly believe the answer to this question is YES! There are several different ways documentation can help generate revenue. The element I find most satisfying is the fact that everyone is fair, honest, and genuine. With documentation, you deliver a product, justify the need for a solution, or even ensure environment continuity with routine replacement of ageing equipment. In my service experience, much of what I do may just as well be black magic... My clients don't see a real tangible deliverable for everything. With every effort being to avoid "down time" they are for the most part happy letting me do whatever it is I do as long as the systems works. Things like critical updates, login scripts, backup jobs, etc... all of which have nothing to do with the products my clients develop but all are important to keeping there systems operational and dependable. Since I have started putting together NetworkDNA binders for my clients I feel more comfortable by having a tangible product they receive at the end of a very time consuming IT project. By utilizing the NetworkDNA redundancy practice, the clients "on-site binder" and my own "off-site binder" allows me to provide ongoing contribution to the clients binder by simply making two printouts of every document I create for my own binder. This establishes greater value in the initial investment and ensure long term value in the every hour of service labor induced. The first way network documentation can generate revenue: Performing a network audit or inventory. This is an interrogative process of looking at everything, asking lots of question then developing and delivering a complete NetworkDNA binder. This is VERY time consuming... I recommend the cost for the deliverable binder be only for that of labor. The binder itself should have no cost... specifically if using an open source set of templates like NetworkDNA. The bonus value gained by a service provider is you know know how old all of their hardware is, when all software expired, and what there system is... you are the perfect candidate for providing future service. The second way to generate revenue: As an extension to a project... i.e. New server install. In this senerio I only document the new items going into the network and the information relevant to the new items. So in the project of a new server, I would start a NetworkDNA binder, get or create the needed device model document(s), start the device list doc, create the device deviation doc, go into every network global document that this equipment or project requires.. like anti-virus, backup, dns, dhcp, protocol info, etc. yada yada yada.. you get the picture. Anyway the greatest part of this practice is the documentation is a simple practice of regurgitating everything you just learned about the new equipment.. a very simple time to document. Other ways revenue is generated: Software renewal, Identify missing components (maybe a firewall, server a/v, print server, etc), Getting hardware replaced in a timely manner to maintain a highly productive environment. I'll blog about others as I think of them :)